


A Bramble In The Brain

by Varynova



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Earth C (Homestuck), Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Podfic, Sadstuck, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 13:57:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20818424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Varynova/pseuds/Varynova
Summary: Rose Lalonde is nothing like her mother.Or perhaps that's what she insisted before the age of 16.Now, at 23, you have come to terms with the fact that...You could have been a better daughter.





	A Bramble In The Brain

**Author's Note:**

> You can listen to a podfic version of me reading this story [here](https://soundcloud.com/user-213864974/bramble-in-the-brain).

Sometimes, when the chilblains reaching into your mind freeze too deeply the core of your being, you take two little pills from the bottle Dr. Practitioner gave you, last month. She likened them, at the time, to the old Earth drug, hydrocodone, by way of explaining their risks, side effects. You can't say that you focused too intently on her words, likely because you were dug in to the proximal phalanges in the throes of another episode, auras of light and sound ringing in your head.

But that wasn't a prophecy, was it? You weren't drowned in foresight, then; this was a memory.

They gave your mother hydrocodone, once, mixed with acetaminophen after a... minor car accident. It had been your job, as her eleven-year-old caregiver, to select the pills for her on a precise schedule, bring them with a thimbleful of water, the most she ever drank.

You hid the pills, the rest of the time. You hid them from your bedridden mother even before you went to the kitchen, fetched the stepstool with which to cook her burnt scrambled eggs and besotten toast or microwave bacon. You would bring her a glass of orange juice, just once, during that week, but she joked at the time that she wished she had some champagne to mix with it so for the rest of her meals you brought her Coca-Cola, apple juice, or cold-brewed black tea from the jug in the fridge.

Each of these elicited similar jokes, until you stopped bringing her beverages altogether.

When she finally touched your forearm, asked with a smile for something to drink, you found the tonic water she kept in the lukewarm plastic bottle under the liquor cabinet, and clumsily poured a plastic cupful to lug to her. You expected the worst, but she gulped it down, barely managing to hide her coiled lips of distaste. She made no jibe about gin.

She asked you, some weeks later, about where the remainder of the pillbottle had gone. You were mute, then, one of the rare times of your childhood you refused to quip or snidely chide your mother. She laughed, and said that she needed to dispose of them safely, so they didn't make their way into the waterway under your home. You refused to answer, holding your lips pursed, casting your eyes away from her overgrown bangs, that held her own eyes at bay.

The next time you sought out your hiding spot-- the unzipped underside of an overstuffed pillow on your bed, adjacent your stuffed bear-- the pills had been removed.

Now, as an adult, you recognize that she most certainly did dispose of them, that even she couldn't bring herself to chide your child self, to promise you she would _never_ abuse them, down them all to supplement her other habits. You earnestly thought that if you rendered them to her that her sudden bouts of disappearance-- punctuated by the haunting, crisp ring of her laugh around your cavernous, darkened home-- would only worsen, until she would simply vanish forever, sink into the river below your house or the mausoleum behind it.

You could've been a better daughter.

* * *

So rarely do your visions trigger emesis these days that a stark prescience like this one is all the more pungent. It shoves its way into your eyeballs from behind, flooding your skull with the highbeams of foreknowledge, buckles your midsection hard enough to cast your teacup skittering over the kitchen floor.

You fall to one knee on the hard, cold tile, flooded with images.  
JOHN: she said it wasn’t like that!  
JOHN: i mean... she said it was under control.  
He tilts his hand up, thumb and forefinger extended, as if miming the imbibing of medication or...  
ROXY: yeah w/e  
ROXY: cant say its much my business anymore  
ROXY: rose and i arent as close as we used to be

John's is a gesture you know well. When your mother was out of sight, during your childhood, you made the same mocking wag innumerable times. She may even have caught you at it, because she, like any parent, sees the many incautious gestures by their rebellious children, chooses to dismiss with grace the ways that, no doubt, every young person chafes against the imperfections of the people who raise them.

You barely make it over the sink in time, the tears of shame and pain mingling with the steaming water from the faucet.

You could have been a better daughter.


End file.
